INBOTS: Building bridges between robots, businesses and society

As robots’ skills are amazingly rocketing at the technical level, our imagination flies envisioning their vast potential to assist us in our everyday life. But technical breakthroughs cannot walk alone. A favourable ecosystem is essential to foster robotics, and this means that legislation, ethics, businesses and end-users have to be ready to embrace them.

With the aim of fostering a suitable paradigm for the introduction of robotics, a new EU Project was born in Brussels, called INBOTS. The consortium has more than 25 partners from 13 different countries, and wants to create a community hub that gathers together multidisciplinary experts to deliver the best future guidelines for creating responsible regulation and standards.

INBOTS CSA focuses on interactive robots, meaning all those which work closely with humans. This is the framework where PAL Robotics’ robots are also placed, since their mission is to actively collaborate with people. We also agree with and believe that we have to support each other to grow a positive European robotics ecosystem all together. INBOTS is a great opportunity for that and it is aligned with other strong European initiatives.

The four pillars that sustain robots’ success

INBOTS becomes “a platform to establish a working synergy between four pillars that covers all stakeholders in Interactive Robotics”, which are:

Technical Pillar

Business Pillar

Ethical, legal and socioeconomic Pillar

End-users, policy makers and general public Pillar

As the head of Unit of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in the European Commission Anne Bajart stated at the Kick-off meeting,coordination and support actions are important to achieve agreements on relevant aspects, both technical and non-technical. This is key to reinforce the European leadership in robotics, which can lead to strengthen the industry and boost the economy.